Kaludoscopehttp://kaludoscope.com
We make fun and inclusive games - and help others to do the sameThu, 10 Aug 2017 11:41:26 +0000en-GBhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.2https://i1.wp.com/kaludoscope.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/cropped-Icon-colour-dark.png?fit=32%2C32Kaludoscopehttp://kaludoscope.com
3232115228061Global Game Jam Diversifiers for 2017http://kaludoscope.com/general/global-game-jam-diversifiers-2017/
Thu, 12 Jan 2017 14:06:56 +0000http://kaludoscope.com/?p=152We at Kaludoscope are fairly fond of game jams. Indeed, our current project – Dragon Queens – was first drafted in the… Read more Global Game Jam Diversifiers for 2017

]]>We at Kaludoscope are fairly fond of game jams. Indeed, our current project – Dragon Queens – was first drafted in the wake of Antholojam, at the tail end of 2014. For those not yet familiar with this form of game creation: it’s named after a type of collaboration found in jazz, in which a small group of creators get together to create a new piece of work in a short amount of time.
Global Game Jam 2016 in Stockholm (photo by Gemma)

A common point of entry to this hobby is Global Game Jam – a multi-national weekend of game-making, to a theme which changes every year. Accompanying this central theme are optional ‘diversifiers’ – a checklist of ideas and prompts to help direct or expand the potential of the jam game. In recent years these diversifiers have included a few pointers relating to accessibility, and this year’s event is no different. The selection, which was announced very recently, includes:

“Don’t say a word”
A multiplayer game that requires communication between players, without relying on text or voice.

“The colour and the shape”
A colour-based game that can also be played by people who have any kind of difficulty seeing colour.

“I see what you’re saying”
All audio is subtitled, and the presentation of the subtitles (e.g. size, colour, container) can be customised by player.

“Spaced”
Played using only the spacebar – no mouse, no other inputs.

“Another way in”
Allow players to choose which input method they want to use, e.g. choice between mouse or keyboard, choice between tilt, virtual stick or tap, choice between controller or voice.

So, what can one do with such diversifiers, especially if you feel you want to create an accessible game this month? A lot of the fun and challenge lays in working this out amongst yourselves at the jam (as has been the case at GGJ Stockholm, which I, Gemma, have helped organise in the past). Nevertheless, I thought we could take a broad look at some of these, and perhaps help get ideas churning.

So, for those of you who’ll be jamming with me across the world in a couple of weeks’ time, here are some thoughts to bear in mind before and after the jam begins:

Come Prepared

What a few of these diversifiers have in common is that they’ll rely upon extra hardware and tools. It need not necessarily be anything fancy though, and it’s likely you may have some very useful kit attached to a home PC but simply hadn’t considered bringing it along. Just as you might pack a VR kit in order to make a game for that platform, you might also consider bringing:

any custom controller kit you may have, such as a MakeyMakey – great for making simple, single- or multi-button touch inputs over USB.

Not only do extra tools like this help lend more input options to your game, but they’ll help it stand apart from the banks of others simply running on laptops. Just be sure to test these inputs in prototype builds as early as possible, so you can pre-empt any issues later on into the jam.

Devices like the MakeyMakey allow you to incorporate inputs which may not only be more innovative and creative, but also more physically accessible. (Photo by Gemma)

On Subtitles and Visual Aids

Integrating visual aids into your game – especially for the “I see what you’re saying” diversifier – can be relatively easy so long as you start at the beginning of the project. Ensure that at least one person on your team can take care of integrating on-screen subtitles, and be sure to include options for it in your game menus.

Having adjustable subtitles is key for meeting individual accessibility needs, but it also makes your UI work considerably easier! Giving players the choice of subtitles with stroke around the letters, or frames in the form of a translucent or opaque backdrop, gives them control over that part of the UI. At the risk of endorsing laziness, this is of course an ideal way to avoid having to test which subtitle variant works best on your interface – just enable them all!

Don’t forget, however, that you should avoid sharply-contrasting colours and that you should pay attention to the font used. Offer alternatives, and include serif and non-serif options as some people find it easier to differentiate characters with more defined ‘edges’.

In General

Diversifiers like “Spaced” may at first seem like a restriction, or an aesthetic choice for your game’s inputs – but they’re also very useful for those who, for whatever reason, cannot make use of complex input devices like game controllers and keyboards. They’re also much more user-friendly for anyone who isn’t familiar with digital devices, and so may not have an instinctive awareness of where buttons are in relation to each other.

Incidentally, a similar rule can be applied to touch input on mobile games – as in the case of Dragon Queens, wherein the game can be played in its entirety using one finger. Unless you’re setting out to make a game with a physical challenge (which is fine!), do consider the ways in which your players will interact with the game and always strive for the simplest option.

Finally, there are some surprisingly simple ways to anticipate issues regarding colour recognition. It may be enough to simply run checks over your own graphics at various stages of the development. Every now and then, try to verbally or mentally describe your on-screen elements in relation to the others, and if colour ever becomes a key part of that description, work to differentiate it in another way – ideally through shape, but perhaps also by adjusting saturation.

It’s also possible to check your screen layout against proofs for two types of colour blindness in a variety of tools, including one built-in to Adobe Photoshop. So, if you’re making UI layouts in that program, ensure that you make use of the ‘proof setup’ menu every now and then (see below). The results should help give you a rough indication of any trouble areas.

Happy jamming!

Footnotes

It should of course be noted that Kaludoscope AB is in no way affiliated with Global Game Jam, inc. This article is intended as friendly advice in the spirit of the event, but is in no way endorsed by that organisation.

]]>152Make Cake, Not Warhttp://kaludoscope.com/developer-diary/make-cake-not-war/
Mon, 02 Jan 2017 16:53:33 +0000http://kaludoscope.com/?p=150For those of us who follow the Gregorian calendar, the past weekend has been widely observed as the start of… Read more Make Cake, Not War

]]>For those of us who follow the Gregorian calendar, the past weekend has been widely observed as the start of a new adventures, renewed efforts and many other such optimistic ideals. In that forward-looking spirit, we thought it might be an appropriate time to take a brief look at the utopic world in which Dragon Queens is set.

As you may already have noticed, we’re touting Dragon Queens as a non-military strategy game. This is not a unique proposition, but it is a rare one. Instead of tasking our players with plotting the movements of armies, and domination of the landscape through forcing submission, we instead hang our mechanics around acts of trade and prosperity. The core gameplay is relatively simple:

Prosperity – in which a settlement has its material needs met in abundance, and so can produce an excess of whatever it specialises in – can only come about because the world of Dragon Queens is one devoid of scarcity. To put that another way: nobody in the realm starves or wants for basic provisions, and so they are free to enjoy life under the dragons’ benevolent rule. Indeed, if for whatever reason a settlement ceases to prosper, no actual harm is done, except perhaps to the squabbling dragons’ pride.

In short: the world of the dragon queens is one with no negative consequences, and thus less pressure with nothing to lose. The dragon queens are capable of summoning magical creatures in order to do their bidding, but influence of these pawns and spectres is limited to interactions with other such magical constructs, or to conversation with trade delegates from the realm’s settlements.

All the strategic actions played out from your tower vantage point affect the realm only superficially, in antithesis to the actions of war. Furthermore, as we’ll see in later blog updates, it will be apparent to the careful observer that your subjects may already know a thing or two about the historical costs of war…

And why are we developing a game with such utopian ideals? The simple answer would be “because we want to”, but Dragon Queens is also Kaludoscope’s first attempt at making an inclusive and welcoming game, which we hope many can enjoy. Although fantasy and trading are of course not to every player’s tastes, we look forward to bringing something different to strategy lineups in mobile app. stores. We’re making Dragon Queens for everyone else who might wish to enjoy spreading some good in 2017.

]]>150Iterative Testing in GameCity’s Open Arcadehttp://kaludoscope.com/developer-diary/iterative-testing-at-gamecity-11/
Mon, 31 Oct 2016 15:36:54 +0000http://www.kaludoscope.com/?p=72We’ve just returned from the eleventh GameCity Festival in Nottingham, with many a device battery recharging and our larynxes still recovering… Read more Iterative Testing in GameCity’s Open Arcade

]]>We’ve just returned from the eleventh GameCity Festival in Nottingham, with many a device battery recharging and our larynxes still recovering from the traditional “Marioke” afterparty. We were there, of course, to show Dragon Queens – enjoying its first ever public showcase as part of this year’s fringe Open Arcade.

GameCity has long sought to bring games to the general public, shedding particular light upon the act of game development. It’s that focus which gave us room to not only prove our concept amongst Dragon Queens‘ target audiences, but also to ‘jam’ the event and iterate rapidly upon the game’s UX, level design and game balance. In short: we arrived at the festival with a rough prototype, and found we were able to polish it through 5 builds over the course of three days.

Proofing

The version we tested was stripped down to its bare essentials, incorporating some aspects of Dragon Queens‘ intended UX and UI along with ‘hotseated’ multiplayer and a focus on the game’s core mechanics:

2D, top-down perspective (as opposed to a 3D world and a relatively fixed camera)

Single-device, ‘hotseat’ multiplayer (as opposed to options for single-player, or networked play across two nearby devices)

No ‘dragon flight’ mode (which in the final game will serve a variety of optional functions)

First pass at a standard, visually clear and uncluttered UI (as opposed to a broadly customisable one)

A single, straightforward level map, intended for sessions of no more than 20 minutes

For every point save the available play modes, we were able to test our initial build, discuss its execution with visiting players, and then either work on a fix in parallel to that or incorporate those changes into a new, nightly build. In practice this often meant Gemma would chaperone games on one device whilst Delia would prepare a build for another identical one. We would then swap devices between games – ready to identify new and old bugs, and condense what is already quite common exhibition practice into cycles of an hour or even less. For such an early stage of development as ours this was invaluable and far more efficient than we had first expected.

Most of our changes were made to the UI, ensuring that players were being presented with enough information to play without the need for an interactive tutorial. This often required the use of text labels – something we intend to reduce again in future iterations.

It’s worth saying that this was only ever likely to work with either very early proofs-of-concept (as ours is), or a comparatively simple game. Although we were able to create or tweak a handful of assets ‘on the fly’, anything more than these surface-level edits would have required days between builds. It was also to our advantage to find that – due to the manner in which GameCity’s Open Arcade was arranged – public footfall was comparatively small, certainly when compared with the likes of an exposition.

Iterations

With Delia working on new builds for about two-thirds of the total time we spend exhibiting (as well as a couple of nightly builds), we managed:

a complete re-positioning of the game’s settlement information panels

a re-drawn demo level, significantly reducing both the session length and the amount of time players spent in isolation of each other

a rough but effective, new UI for displaying settlements’ needs and produce – further reducing session length as well as cognitive load on the players

partial implementation of a new level feature, to help provide players with a safety net against an aggressive opponent

as well as the identification and fixing of a dozen or more straightforward and ‘edge case’ bugs

The end result was a Saturday prototype which was leaps and bounds ahead of what we presented to players on the Thursday. We were fortunate enough to be able to test this version of the game amongst new and returning players alike, further validating our choices and enriching feedback on the gameplay, UI and the concept itself.

Although this proof-of-concept will stand at some remove from the final version of Dragon Queens, it’s been gratifying to test so many of its ‘soft’ features – and the underlying market potential – in a niche space like GameCity. We can now look forward to putting our next build out to a wider public, having already incorporated valuable feedback from everyone who played in Nottingham – to whom we are of course extremely grateful.

]]>72The Whys and Wherefores of an Inclusive “Dragon Queens”http://kaludoscope.com/general/the-whys-and-wherefores-of-an-inclusive-dragon-queens/
Tue, 23 Aug 2016 08:16:15 +0000http://www.kaludoscope.com/?p=57Our chief goal with Dragon Queens is, of course to provide an entertaining experience. No surprises there. More than that though,… Read more The Whys and Wherefores of an Inclusive “Dragon Queens”

]]>Our chief goal with Dragon Queens is, of course to provide an entertaining experience. No surprises there. More than that though, we at Box Kaleidoscope are setting out to make this and all our future games as inclusive and accessible as possible. We’ll be exploring some of the ways we actually go about this – and the ways we’ll be enabling other creators to do so – in future blog posts. For now though: I, Gemma, would like to address our core motivations. Why are trying to make Dragon Queens as accessible and inclusive as possible?

The question almost answers itself, of course – greater accessibility means more players will be capable of enjoying the things we make. But beneath this abstract, moral philosophy lay some startling numbers. I’ve spent part of this this year delivering a talk on this topic, entitled The Art of Letting More People Play Your Game. It starts out with a broad exploration of just what constitutes a “minority” audience, and at the risk of sounding cliché: the conclusions may indeed come as a surprise.

Gemma delivering her talk at Nordic Game 2016 (photo by Ian Hamilton)

When it comes to sizing up both our audience and the sorts of constraints we should design around, it’s good to start with a few guiding questions:

Just what kind of physical and cultural circumstances might game-players find themselves in?

How are games failing to pay due respect or attention to these factors, and thus causing discomfort and/or disabling circumstances to arise?

How can we fix this?

It’s a straightforward process, from which I pulled together the following list of demographic ‘tags’:

We can use these to narrow down census data, of course – but more importantly they can help us consider our players, their circumstances and our design choices. Take each ‘tag’ in isolation and you’ll end up with what might be considered a minority demographic; mix more than one and you have intersectionality. This represents not only a broader picture, but also a truer one given how many of these factors can and likely will overlap for people.

Start applying that census data, and we begin to see that for example: while colour blindness may indeed affect an estimated 44 million people in Europe, some of this significant body of people will inevitably experience other factors such as physical impairment, poverty, or even having a cultural background which differs from what might be considered a ‘western European standard’.

The conclusion at which we arrive is basically this: if we wish to expand our audience from those who are already being amply served, we must do so somewhat flexibly and broadly, rather than with a very narrow focus – such as one might initially expect.

The good news – for us at Box Kaleidoscope, for players, and for other developers who may want to welcome more players in – is that many of the design steps we can take will actually serve more than one demographic ‘tag’. Moreover, when we consider design guidelines such as: monitoring visual contrast; ensuring the game controls can be re-mapped or operated with one hand; and keeping a broadly-representative cast of characters.. these steps carry benefits for all players, whether they regularly encounter disabling barriers to play or not.

For example: the ability to slow down on-screen text and not feel pressured by arbitrary time constraints may be a game-changer for those with learning difficulties and/or cognitive impairments, but it also adds quality and choice for those players who may simply be distracted, in a rush, or looking to play whilst engaged in some other task.

All this adds up to why we’re going a little bit further with our interfaces and overall game experience. Which is not to say that we (or anyone else) can go all the way: common sense dictates that here as with any endeavour, our resources have their limits, and even our efforts to engage people in a visually-driven experience for a particular set of hardware will exclude some. We have, however, identified a series of steps we can take to avoid unnecessary and disabling barriers in Dragon Queens, and we look forward to opening up our findings, tools and processes to as many people as possible.

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]]>57In the Beginning…http://kaludoscope.com/general/in-the-beginning/
Tue, 16 Aug 2016 08:19:27 +0000http://www.kaludoscope.com/home/?p=42Friendliest of greetings! Herein lay the earliest murmurings of Box Kaleidoscope: a Europe-based games studio making fun, inclusive and accessible interactive… Read more In the Beginning…

]]>Friendliest of greetings! Herein lay the earliest murmurings of Box Kaleidoscope: a Europe-based games studio making fun, inclusive and accessible interactive experiences. We are Gemma Thomson and Delia Hamwood, and it seemed natural to start this developers’ blog with a look back at our journey up to this point.

It all began when we first met during a frantic play session at a games event in the UK, in which an open classroom and an assortment of craft materials were transformed into a cardboard fort and dazzling foil weaponry and accessories. From there, it was only a matter of time until we worked on game jam projects together: first with a feminist exploration of body issues; then a curated jam on the topic of golden-age sci-fi. In that latter jam we worked with another coder and an artist to create A Planet Wakes – a thrilling tale of civil engineering in space.

That month-long project was a resounding success for our team, and the experience left us hungry to work on more games together. So it was that in 2015 the two of us began work on what was then called Pink Dragon Queens. The initial concept was built around the cartoonish idea of a giant, pink, reptilian monarch -the template for Maude, our first dragon queen.

Knowing that we’d enjoyed working in the strategy genre, it was a short leap to construct a basic world around this character, and thus form the premise of the game: one in which a number of dragon queens are competing amongst each other to be the most fabulous ruler in the land. The realm itself would be the staging ground, and whilst we initially dabbled with military strategy, it soon became clear that we ought to make a friendlier-looking game than one which descended into constant fighting, no matter how bloodless.

Development dropped off for a time as other commitments took sway, but our circumstances changed in the following spring – coinciding neatly with an opportunity to join the game incubator at Sweden Game Arena in Skövde. We decided to launch a studio then, with Dragon Queens as its vehicle. Gemma looked back at the design briefs of old and cobbled them together into a more cohesive, non-military strategy game; meanwhile Delia began work on our digital prototype in Unity.

.. and that is what brings us to the present day! Box Kaleidoscope currently runs as a two-person outfit: in Sweden, Gemma balances business training with written and visual design; meanwhile in London, Delia pulls the prototype together for our debut game. Our primary goals are to gather funding with which to formally launch the business, and of course to make the game itself.

Neither of us has steered a startup on our own before, but we learn quickly and have long since gotten into the habit of reciprocal knowledge-sharing amongst the independent games community. We’ll be doing what we can to share insights from this journey here, as well as to keeping you up-to-date on our actual project progress. Thanks for joining us.